Civil rights activist Rosa Parks (1913-2005), whose birthday was February 4th, is best known for refusing to give up her seat to a white man on a public bus in segregated Montgomery, Alabama. Her refusal and arrest on December 1, 1955 sparked the Montgomery bus boycott and helped fuel the modern civil rights movement.
Events in Rosa Parks’ life are chronicled in newspapers and comic books and reinforce her well-justified iconic status. At times, though, their simplified coverage perpetuates the myth of Parks as the quiet seamstress who was too tired to stand to give up her seat. By contrast, the Rosa Parks Papers at the Library of Congress and the new exhibition drawn from them, Rosa Parks: In Her Own Words, provide insight into Parks as a lifelong activist. Still, newspapers and comic books, whatever their limitations and biases, can be valuable in providing contemporary historical and cultural context.
As a young woman, Parks helped her husband, Raymond, in organizing support to defend the Scottsboro Boys, nine black teenagers falsely convicted of raping two white women in Alabama in 1931. She was also active in trying to save the life of Jeremiah Reeves, who, in 1952, at the age of 16, had a consensual relationship with a white woman who then accused him of rape. Even though the case went twice to the Supreme Court, Reeves was executed at the age of 22.
